Crazy Stable

I went to Red Hook today, but not to visit the much-hyped new Ikea. I just wanted a bag of seed starter mix, so I stopped in at the Liberty Garden Center. Since my last visit, much has changed. It's still a verdant tangle of plants set incongruously in the midst of wharves and warehouses, down the cobblestone streets of this once-rough waterfront district. But they've now got a lush sidewalk garden spilling out onto Conover Street, with cleomes and huge potted exotics.

I headed down to their dock. This guy looked menacing from a distance, but up close was a sweetheart.

The garden center didn't have seed starter, so I settled for potting soil.  This old girl (named Brooklyn) guards the check-out desk; she was found in a darkened cellar, malnourished and wary, but now rules the counter confidently and even demands that people share croissants with her.

 
Liberty also no longer had their stock clustered along the pier, but their adjacent field is still brushed by salty breezes and within earshot of chiming buoys in the harbor.

There are zany mini-gardens with found artifacts; one features a boat, another a row of some sort of pumps.

The area has a cluster of odd, artsy businesses--a glassworks, a framer, and a place selling very overpriced key lime pies. It is also home to a huge satellite dish and tower.

Even on the surrounding hardscrabble streets, more gardens flourished. I've never seen such wonderful hollyhocks growing at curbside.  

It's no wonder that hipsters and preservationists fall in love with this strange neighborhood. The remnants of its dock-walloping past, mostly in ruins, make you feel wild and knowing just for walking around down there.

But ruins are tricky things to freeze in time, and they tend to be less beloved by natives than by visitors and newcomers. Speaking of which, I passed the hysteria-inducing Swedish meatball emporium on my way home; it seemed downright deserted, with many workers in reflective vests stationed around the perimeter to direct traffic that wasn't there yet.  

He wasn't always this funny or this wise. (I am thinking of his "why is having an abortion any worse than making an omelette?" argument.) But when it came to two of my obsessions, Houses and Stuff, George got it right like a Zen master. Here's a houseblogger's tribute: Carlin, free-versified. (Or catch him here.)

That’s the whole meaning of life, isn’t it:

            trying to find a place

                    for your stuff?

That’s all your house is;

your house is just a place

for your stuff.

If you didn’t have

            so much

                        goddamn

                                    stuff,

you wouldn’t need a house.

You could just walk around all the time.

That’s all your house is,

           just a pile of stuff

                        with a cover on it.

You see that when you take off in an airplane

and you look down

and you see everybody’s got

a little pile of stuff.

Everybody’s got their own pile of stuff.

And when you leave your stuff,

you’ve gotta lock it up.

Wouldn’t want somebody to come by

and take some of your stuff.

            (They always take the good stuff…)

That’s all your house is:

            a place to keep your stuff

                        while you go out and get

                                    more stuff.

—George Carlin,  1937-2008

Photo: New York Times 

For those of you who thought that you could find refuge from Brooklyn's plague of artists in the leafy precincts of Victorian Flatbush, think again! Just because our neighborhood is  more porch-swing-and-gingerbread  than post-industrial gritty doesn't mean that we're not crawling with creative types, too.  And this weekend, you can visit them in their lairs for free on our first Artists Studio Tour! (It's conveniently the same weekend as the Victorian Flatbush House Tour, which happens this Sunday; the Studio Tour runs from noon to five both Saturday and Sunday.)

No, the CrazyStable is not on the tour; the studio where I engage in desultory flings with the book arts is tucked away on our top floor, and the logistical and housekeeping hurdles were just too daunting. (The whole scruffy-but-hip thing works a lot better in a loft.) But I will be showing some stuff in the lusciously appointed home of dear friend and studio tour founder/rabble-rouser Karen Friedland, who conjured this event out of the same fertile imagination that produces her vibrant paintings.

We had an opening reception for a group show tonight spread across two  local coffee shops, Connecticut Muffin and Vox Pop (above), on Cortelyou Road (both good places to start the tour this weekend, they'll have maps). I converted an accordion book from my Transformation Psalter to a sort of vertical triptych for the show;  it was the first time I've seen my work hung in a public place since high school, and it was ridiculously gratifying.

As was the proclamation issued to our fledgling project by Borough Prez Marty Markowitz (and presented by his stand-in, a lovely and self-possessed young lady named Jamilah Joseph, on the right next to impresario Karen). Everyone acts bemused by these proclamations, but they are big and beautifully lettered and secretly, we love them when they're all about us.

 Some day, maybe the tour will include my book-art atelier right here in the Stable. Until then, hope I see you in elegant borrowed digs this weekend.